Since the lawsuit of Einhorn v Mergatroyd Productions ended 14 years ago this April, I don't spend a lot of time thinking about Edward Einhorn, happily.
So my blissful state was interrupted today when I came across a review in the New York Times of a play written and directed by Einhorn.
I am not unhappy it is a fairly negative review:
Yet Einhorn remains a distant invention, a documentarian-artist through whom we encounter facts but who allows us no access to his own emotional back story: any hints of his early relationship with his mother, any depths to his fascination with his grandfather.
As the show’s director as well, he serves up moments of postmodern fun, but sometimes falls prey to making scenes so cute they are obnoxious (a top-hat-and-lab-coat song-and-dance number, for example). Mike Mroch’s set design, with walls made of disconnected vertical panels, emphasizes the show’s fragmentary approach.
“Doctors” is beholden to its premise, the story of Einhorn’s famous grandfather, even as it playfully cartwheels beyond to reveal its real intent. Yet it doesn’t commit fully to either Doctor Jane or Doctor Alexander but rather to the idea of writing about them. Here the writer, not the doctor, is in.
I think it's appropriate that Einhorn's theatrical production is about his family. Einhorn would not have a theatrical career if it wasn't for his family's vast wealth: he once mentioned on his blog that he doesn't have to work for a living thanks to his inheritance.
He is a mediocre writer and a worse director. When he directed my play TAM LIN he put actors in dangerous situations and his staging was dead. Not to mention the excess audio-video equipment he decided he needed at the last minute, for a play that was much, much better low-tech.
This is the problem with economic inequality in the United States. It leads to people like Edward Einhorn and Donald Trump doing things they should not be doing, but which wealth permits them to do.